COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho — The beaches around Lake Coeur d'Alene are busy ahead of another hot weekend -- one Kootenai County sheriff, Robert Norris, hopes isn't as packed as this past Fourth of July.
"So this is fairly significant," Sheriff Norris said during a press conference Friday. "We had 34 arrests and/or citations. Fifty percent of those were from Idaho and 50% were from other states."
That's between June 29 and July 5. Only two of those violations ended in arrest.
Sheriff Norris says there were 97 bookings into the Kootenai County Jail in that same time period, with that vast majority (65 arrestees) Idaho residents.
Those numbers don't count other responses, like a deadly incident July 1 on the Spokane River.
"The delay time was two minutes since they'd last been seen," Kootenai County Deputy Jordan Joling said. "So, I quickly jumped in in an attempt to locate him."
Joling was on routine boat patrol when swimmers flagged her team down for a drowning man.
"We tied a rope around me so I could get further away from the boat and my partners could adjust without having to worry about the props and where I was," Joling said.
Deputy Joling has no dive rescue experience.
"You can recognize how dangerous it is just by the fact she wanted to tie a rope to herself because we know if you're going into the water and you're going to pull somebody out of the water, it's very difficult to do without any sort of dive gear, any flotation gear," Kootenai County Lt. Justin Arts said.
Sheriff Norris says while water violations over the week of the fourth were consistent with past years, he's concerned with the number of out-of-state violators and may look to the governor for help.
"It stresses our patrol force and our marine force significantly," Norris said. "We would like to have conversations with the governor of Idaho and the legislature of Idaho to consider local option taxing because many of the users of law enforcement services, not only in this holiday weekend but generally, are not the property tax owner."
The Kootenai County Marine Unit is operating with half the optimal staff, further stressing an already short-staffed team.
"They are stretched thin," Norris said. "They all work a degree of overtime."
Saturday's drowning is still under investigation. It's not known at this time what factors led to the man's death.
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